Forget
by darkanine
Summary: Five years after the disappearance of her fiance, a reporter is sent to Iceland to find out about a mysterious, mythological city in the sea, only to find that Rapture is a very real, very dangerous place. Currently being rewritten because reasons. DEAD STORY.
1. o1 Exordium

_Howdy fellas. First attempt at fanfiction in about, ah, 5 years, so this should be interesting to say the least. First EVAR attempt at Bioshock so you shall have to bear with me on this one. I'm a huge fan of the concept of the series, but I've only actually played the first game myself, though I know the story, etc., of the second, so there will likely be some discrepancies. Anyways... This takes place at some point between the events of Bioshock and Bioshock 2. Hope you like it. C:_

* * *

He left.

Without a goodbye, or a reason, or even a fight, he left.

Of course when you're eighteen, everything is the end of the world, especially things that probably don't matter. But this did. She had given him everything - they were engaged to be married in a month, after all.

But everything that she had given was gone with him, except for her train ticket to New York and what was left of her ambition. So she left too, taking with her everything but the photo albums and her diary, and so she forgot about Vincent Charles Legarde.

* * *

"No, sir, I understand. The story will be back before I am."

A bespectacled, mustachioed man nodded to himself, satisfied, as a young lady with short-cropped auburn hair fled his office with a notebook in one hand and a plane ticket in the other. It had been seven years, give or take, since Bianca Heuer had joined his staff as a reporter, and she _was_ one of the best. It seemed to him that she lived to work rather than vice versa, and that was quite alright with him. If he needed a story in on Christmas, or any other day of the year as she took no vacation days and hadn't since she started working, Bianca was the gal for the job. If these rumors of an Atlantis-esque underwater city free from any established government agency's influence were true (which he doubted), she would find out. If they were false, well, she'd find that out too, and perhaps pause to enjoy her pseudo-vacation on the lovely… Iceland…

Bianca herself wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of Icelandic adventures - wasn't it cold there? - but she didn't have enough emotion, positive or negative, on the subject to argue for a different assignment. Though she was, perhaps, a little annoyed that she was being sent out on a sensational Loch Ness monster chase for the sake of readership, she couldn't really think of anything better to write about. As such, the following Monday, Ms. Heuer boarded a plane which would eventually deposit her on the coast of Iceland.

As Bianca disembarked the plane, she instantly regretted her decision to wear a suit skirt as she stepped into the chilly November air - hose only went so far when it came to keeping warm. She wasn't expecting anybody, so she collected her things as quickly as she could and made a beeline for the road, where she hoped to flag a taxi or something and break for the coastal fishing town she would be departing for in the morning.

To her surprise, she was stopped on her way out the door by a man in ratty clothing, not much older than she was, though certainly more tired-looking. His ginger hair was smartly cut and he had a certain quality of once-upon-a-time handsomeness about his pale, emaciated face, though it was overshadowed by a wide-eyed urgentness he didn't bother to suppress.

"I don't have any money for you," Bianca said, pulling her arm away and wrinkling her nose.

The man furrowed his brow and squinted at her as though he didn't understand, and she was about to break out the Icelandic dictionary when he shook his head and snorted, replying in perfectly coherent, though accented, English, "Oh, no, lassie, I'm not lookin' for money. Fact, I'm not lookin' for much from you, but I have somethin' that you might be interested in."

Bianca gazed at the dirty Irishman in unimpressed disbelief, folding her arms across her narrow chest and tapping her foot. "And what might that be, mister..?"

"Phineas," he replied, making a motion as though to offer a hand to shake, but he jumped a little upon laying eyes upon it and tucked both hands behind his back. "I have information for you, Miss Heuer." Before she could ask how he knew her name, he leaned in and whispered, "I'm from Rapture."

"I don't know _who_ you talked to prior to my arrival here, but I am _not_ interested in any - ah - paid carnal activities," she hissed, starting to push past him. Her coworkers were imbeciles.

"No, no!" The red head cut Bianca off and held his hands out for her to stop. "Rapture!" He winced, looking around to make sure nobody else had heard and dropped his voice to a whisper. "The city you're lookin' for… It's called Rapture, I lived there, I can help you find it if you'll let me. All I ask is that you take me with you."

Bianca's cold grey eyes fixed upon him, but her lips were pursed and an eyebrow was cocked with interest. She was intrigued. Even if this man turned out to be a nut, it was significant that he had at least heard of this alleged anarchistic city in the ocean. But how had he known that she, or anyone else, was coming to investigate? It wasn't as though her paper printed announcements of upcoming articles…

"How do I know that you're telling the truth?" she asked, eying him carefully. The frantic urgentness in his deep brown eyes had faded and he seemed to be sagging with relief, a boyish smile tugging at his lips.

"You don't, I suppose, but believe you me; even if you _could_ find the place yourself you'll need me once you get down there. It's a jungle down there," he replied. He no longer seemed concerned with getting her to trust him - he had correctly read her expression of interest to mean that she would be following this lead to its end. "Listen, I have a boat that's prepared to take us out there, but we have to leave now. Once it's dark, there's no navigating, and I'm not waiting until tomorrow."

Bianca surveyed him, feeling a little uneasy. "Why can't we wait until tomorrow? I have a reservation at an inn; they'll be suspicious if I don't show up to claim my room," she told him. Not really. Nobody would care, except perhaps her boss. He'd have to actually do his job if she died.

"Well, that is a very good question," Phineas informed her, starting to walk. Bianca looked around for an explanation and, finding none, followed him. "Very soon, a new line of… Well, something that will make your job, and mine, much more difficult will be happening within a week. I'd like to be in and out before that happens or it won't be safe for you."

"Parade or something?" Bianca mused, not expecting a response as she absentmindedly allowed herself to be helped into the passenger seat of a beaten up junker of a car. It was only when the door shut with a thump that she looked up and frowned. "Wait, I didn't agree-"

"It'll be fine," Phineas said quickly, running a hand though his hair and sighing with relief before he got into the car on the driver's side and put the keys in the ignition. "If it makes you feel any better, we can give the inn a call once we get into town and you can tell them you've been kidnapped by a dashing young gentleman," he added, seeing the look on her face.

"Just drive," Bianca said a little curtly, clutching her jacket around herself and staring straight ahead.

Phineas shrugged and obliged, happy for some time to himself to think. If he could remember how, that is.

* * *

_Alrighty then guys. That's it for now~ I'd really, really appreciate it if you'd leave a review and let me know what you think so far. I'm not going to waste my time on a story nobody cares about, but give it a couple chapters to get into the actual story before you condemn it absolutely. ; Criticism, ideas, and suggestions are welcome, so have at it. Thanks for reading. :D_


	2. o2 Rapture

_I'm feeling productive today! Two chapters, woo-hoo. Don't get used to it, normally I have homework and a social life, both of which are decidedly absent tonight. There is a very real possibility that I'll update again tomorrow. I'm giddy. C: Well, enjoy, and please leave a review if you notice something wrong/want to flame me/wish for me to bear your children/etc. nobutsrsly review._

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* * *

_

It took almost an hour for Phineas and his passenger to reach Keflavik, by which time it was already almost noon. Upon learning this fact, Phineas swore loudly and dragged a protesting Bianca all the way to the dock, where a very large, solidly build man was waiting, a pipe dangling from his lip and a shadow on his face.

"You're late, laddie buck," the man said gruffly. To Bianca's surprise, he didn't have much of an accent at all - perhaps a bit of accent on his d's, but overall he sounded like an Englishman.

"Aye, keep yer knickers on, boyo," Phineas replied, a calm, casual demeanor taking the place of the frantic rush that he had been overcome with since Bianca had met him. His accent seemed augmented, too, as he fished a brown packer hat out of the small suitcase he carried with him and put it on, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "There's time yet to be off, and I'll make it worth yer while."

"Indeed," scoffed the sailor. His beady eyes turned toward Bianca and he said, "Who's the dame? An extra passenger means extra fare."

Phineas stepped swiftly, yet somehow casually in front of her, his trickster's grin never wavering as he replied, "As I said, _I'll _make it worth your while. She's just an accessory, pay no mind." Bianca pursed her lips and it was all she could do to keep from roaring when one of her ginger companion's hands shot out of his pocket, grabbing hers, as he said brightly, "Come along, darling."

Luckily for him, Bianca was used to such ploys from her experience in undercover reporting, so she quickly assumed the role of a ditzy bimbo who had been swept into something she had no idea about - half true, at any rate. "So, how long will it take to get wherever we're going?" she asked nobody in particular, hoping that one of the men sharing the enclosed space would reply as they set out.

"A while," Phineas replied, rummaging in his beaten-up suitcase once again and pulling out a fat book with no title. He flung it at her, sat down, and pulled his hat down over his eyes.

Bianca sighed and lowered her eyes to the book. Opening to the first page, she discovered that it was a textbook - some sort of philosophy garbage, from the looks of it. "Well, _Miz_ Lamb, maybe I'll learn something from you, since my guide doesn't seem to be talking until we get there," she said quietly to the book and commenced to reading.

* * *

She wasn't sure how long exactly it took them to reach the strange tower jutting from the endless plane of ocean stretching to infinity on every side, or, indeed, if they stopped on the way. The dim pink of dawn was just beginning to tinge the water to the east when she felt her head being prized out of the crease of the book she had fallen asleep on.

"Come on," Phineas said quietly. The tower was still a French fry in the distance, but they seemed to be approaching at a reasonably quick pace, as it was growing larger by the second.

Bianca rubbed her eyes sleepily then looked again at the rapidly approaching wonder of mankind. She was more effectively woken up by a sharp jolt as the boat ran over something that it didn't like, its front end jolting out of the water and coming back down with a splash. The woman's head whipped instinctively around to catch a glance of what they had hit - was that a piece of a _plane?_

"Be careful, ye dolt!" snapped Phineas, placing a hand on top of Bianca's head and shooting a dirty look at the ship's captain. "There's still debris… It should have sunk by now…"

"Still?" Bianca said a little incredulously. "I never heard about a plane going down off of Iceland, how long ago was this?"

"I dunno, five, six years?" he offered with a shrug. "I suppose a scientist engineered some convoluted way to keep it up in case it decided to float toward Rapture… It doesn't matter, it won't affect us, here we are."

Phineas stood up and started to step off the boat onto a set of stairs protruding from the water which the boat had come to a basic stop next to. The captain of the ship stepped in front of him, however, a nasty frown on his lips. "How long is it going to take for you to get my payment down there?" he inquired.

"Actually, I've got it with me…" Phineas said as though he had just remembered. The redhead knelt and dug for a moment in his bag, mumbling to himself as he did so. "Ah, here we are…" The ship's captain perked up a bit as Phineas withdrew his hand from the flaking leather bag, only for his jaw to drop in fear when the young man pulled out a gun, flashed a grin, and shot him three times in the chest.

"Oh my God!" shrieked Bianca as the large man gasped and toppled over, cracking his head on a buoy lying on the floor of the small vessel. "What in the HELL are you doing? I can't… Oh my…"

"Come on," the Irishman said, flashing a devilish grin her way as he hopped from the boat to the stairs. "I don't know about you, but I give meself enough credit to think of meself as better company than corpses."

"You're an asshole," Bianca spat, edging away. He was right, though, and she knew it. Even if she did figure out how to drive the boat, she didn't know the way to, well, anywhere, and the fuel was sure to be low. If she were to wait here for him to return with fuel, the boat was likely to be washed away… "Alright… I don't trust you, though."

"You don't have to," Phineas replied, holding out a hand and offering as genuine a smile as he could muster while at the same time thinking of the horrendous danger that he was getting himself - no, both of them into. "All you have to do is see it…"

Bianca took his hand and gingerly hiked up her skirt a little to allow herself to jump across the gap. She noticed Phineas' wandering eyes and the nature of his smile and yanked her hand away, narrowing her eyes at him. "Don't get any ideas, you."

"What, me?" he asked innocently, his Cheshire grin extending to his eyes for the first time. "I wouldn't dream of it, but that skirt of yours isn't going to cut it down in Rapture." Bianca raised an eyebrow and swiveled her head to prompt him to go on. Phineas shrugged and explained, "You'll need to borrow a pair of pants from me."

"I don't think that will be necessary," the girl replied, sidling past him, bags in hand, toward the heavy iron doors which stood slightly ajar, revealing only darkness. "Let's just go."

"You'll change your mind once you're down there, lass," the ginger warned her with a roll of his eyes, but he hurried forward to hold the door for her.

When they first entered, their eyes were greeted by blinding darkness, but a whir was heard and several bright lights flickered to life, illuminating a large room and a beheaded bronze statue of a man holding a banner that couldn't be read anymore. Bianca gasped as she looked around to see a number of bodies and, when the doors shut automatically behind them, bloody handprints smeared down them as though someone were trying to claw their way out… Even Phineas looked grim - it had gotten worse since he had left.

"About those pants…"

* * *

It took nearly ten minutes for her to find something heavy enough to threaten Phineas with for him to leave her alone to change, but that being done, she felt a lot more… mobile. She wore a loose white button-up tucked into a pair of black pants (held precariously up with suspenders) and a vest, courtesy of Phineas' magic bag, and she felt very scruffy indeed. As she was admiring herself in the blood-smeared glass window of some strange underwater vehicle, Phineas tapped her on the shoulder and held out what seemed to be a fire axe.

"What's that for?" she asked, hesitantly taking the proffered instrument and hefting it in her small hands. "I can't carry this and my bags at the same time…"

"You're going to want that more than your bags, dearie," her companion replied without looking at her as he stuffed bullets with deft ease into the cylinder of a revolver. "Frankly, I'm surprised that the bathysphere is still intact."

"Wait, what?" Bianca tossed the axe aside and backed away as Phineas pressed a button, opening the hatch of the small vessel. "I didn't sign up for any combat, buddy. Take me home, you can come back on your own time. I've got my story…"

"No, you don't," Phineas replied, picking up the axe and steering his panicking charge into the cockpit of the bathysphere. She began to hyperventilate as he closed the door. "This is only one part of Rapture… It was once a beautiful, successful city, and if I'm right then a functional section of the city remains beyond Splicer territory. That's what we're down here to find. You'll get your story… I'll get my home back." Sensing the anger seeping into the girl's exaggerated breaths, he put a stabilizing hand on her shoulder and said, "There are bathyspheres all over Rapture… If worse comes to worst, we can leave, understand?"

The bathysphere closed and began to descend.

"What is down here that's so bad?" she responded in a shaking voice.

"Look, if we keep our heads down…"

"What is _down_ here, Phineas?"

"People," he replied curtly. "There are people down here. Bad people, people who hurt other people to get what they want."

Bianca sighed angrily and flung herself on the floor, sitting cross-legged and pouting. A fizzing noise interrupted her before she could employ any real sulking tactics, however, as a bloodied two-way radio sitting on the floor near her crackled to life.

"Fresh meat in bathysphere two, lovelies…" crooned a soft male voice. The radio cut out as they found themselves floating serenely down an underwater road, lit by neon lights on the buildings and traces of sunlight filtering down through the depths. Even in her state of fear, Bianca had to pause and stare at her surroundings with wonder. A school of brightly colored fish swam idly down below the bathysphere, on their way to nowhere in particular. The underwater plant life swayed gently with the current and everything was lovely…

It didn't last, however, as they found themselves floating into a dark hallway in one of the buildings, only the lights of the bathysphere itself lighting their way. Phineas rolled the cylinder of his revolver nervously, staring straight ahead with a blank, unseeing expression on his face. Bianca gently tugged the axe out of his free hand where it dangled loosely from his fingertips, startling him out of his reverie.

"You'd best stand back a bit," Phineas advised, looking awkwardly down at her with an uncomfortable smile. "Splicers can be pretty nasty."

A gentle jolt went through the bathysphere as it locket into place, settling in front of a dark hole. The only light in the room outside came from inside the bathysphere and from the massive window on the opposite side of the room, through which lights and buildings were blurred yet visible. Bianca stood, taking a step forward, but Phineas put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. Sure enough, three dark figures became visible against the backdrop of the great window-wall, hunched and stealthily moving toward the light.

Phineas' eyes lowered and he mumbled in a hushed tone, "I'm sorry I brought you down here, miss… I didn't… I wasn't thinking."

"It's alright, don't be upset," Bianca said, patting him gingerly on the arm. "I'm sure everything will turn out for the best."

She had barely gotten the words out when one of the figures rushed, moving into the light and pressing its face against the glass and cackling evilly. Bianca uttered a cry and stumbled backward, pressing her back to the back wall of the bathysphere. That thing wasn't a human… Its skin seemed to be fused with a grotesque party mask in the shape of a rabbit, or what was left of its skin anyways. Its skin was leprous, bits of it falling off or missing entirely, and its dress was soiled with more than one liquid.

"Phineas," Bianca breathed, her eyes wide and fearful. "You said there were people down here… Those… those aren't _people_."

"They were," he replied grimly, watching as the first Splicer made a vulgar gesture and whooped with laughter, her companions following slowly, avoiding the light. "They're all spliced up, now. Nothing left but their need for ADAM."

"Who?"

"Shh," Phineas said abruptly, holding a hand up for silence. "Oh, Jesus… Get down. We have bigger problems than Splicers - oh, for God's sake, Bianca, get _down!_"

Before Phineas grabbed her around the middle and threw her to the ground, Bianca managed to peer past the no longer grinning female to see an enormous silhouette against the backdrop of the city, as tall as two people and at least as wide, a murderous red glow fixated upon the people - Splicers? - threatening their safety.

* * *

_Cliffhanger. Unce. Reviews, especially criticism/corrections are very appreciated. 8D_


	3. o3 Boom

_The mysterious red light! What could it be? I bet you can guess. c:  
As I predicted, the rating has been bumped up to M because... well, because GUNS, that's why. Also, Big Daddies.  
I also need to apologize for something - I totally don't write accents consistently/well, so you're just going to have to use your imaginations when it comes to Phineas... He's Irish, but I can't write an Irish accent, so just pretend, okay? :D  
As always, R&R, and enjoy. C:_

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* * *

_

Bianca hit the metal floor hard, curling up to clutch her jarred elbow with gritted teeth, but her stupor was temporary as the bathysphere suddenly shook heavily as something slammed against it. Her grey eyes peered past Phineas' arm thrown protectively over her to see half of the laughing Splicer sliding down the window in a stream of its own blood; the other half was still airborne some yards away.

A tremendous roar was heard as several gunshots went off, followed by the roar of the engine of some huge machine. Bianca started to raise her head, but Phineas groaned and smacked her head promptly back into the ground.

"I told you to stay down," he growled at her smushed face, pressed hard against the metal floor of the bathysphere. "That… That's a Big Daddy. And those Splicers we just saw did something to make it mad."

"A Big Daddy? What on earth are you talking about?" she said, trying to block out the sudden roar of a whirring engine, accompanied by a shriek of pain, seeping in from outside.

"There's a lot I need to explain to you," Phineas muttered, casting a cautious glance over his shoulder up to the bloodstreaked window. "Alright, first and foremost, is ADAM. It's not a person, it's a chemical. I don't know much about it, I'm just an engineer, but everyone down here knows that it's what makes this city tick. It… allows us to do things that _nobody_ on the surface can do - medically, physically, mentally, everything. It enhances us…"

"It's a drug, then?" Bianca guessed quietly.

"Essentially, yes. Scientists have found a way to use it to alter genetic material to allow humans to do all kinds of things that we normally couldn't do. Now, they also discovered this… sea slug that naturally does something to the ADAM that refines it and yields twenty percent more usable substance…" He paused to edge closer to the door, dragging Bianca with him. A red light shone in through the window directly where they had been only a few seconds ago and flickered to a sunshine yellow, then disappeared. "Those Daddies were created to protect the creatures that ingest the slugs to safely harvest the ADAM - they have no other purpose."

"Well, why do they call them Daddies? What exactly did they decide to use to harvest this… this wonder drug?" Bianca asked suspiciously, her face darkening from fear to grim expectation.

"Mister Bubbles! You ripped the Angel's tummy open, now I can't get the ADAM, silly!"

Bianca winced, then froze. "You.." She shook her head in disbelief, starting to stand, but Phineas held her down. "Get off," she snarled, digging her nails into his arm and prying it off of her. She erected herself to a kneeling stance just in time to peek through the window at the enormous, green-lighted Big Daddy picking up what seemed to be a young girl in a purple skirt and a dirty white shirt. "You people used _little GIRLS_ to collect your precious ADAM?"

"Shhh!" Phineas hissed, though he too raised his head to look out at the duo. The Daddy seemed to have heard his companion, as its light had changed from a pleasant seafoam green back to a mustard yellow, but it hadn't moved otherwise. "You have to be careful… Those metal Daddies used to be human, so they're all different… You never know what will set one off and not another."

The pair watched in silence as the Big Daddy set the little girl on its shoulders and lumbered away, down a hall and out of sight, the little one giggling and chatting the whole time.

"They 'used' to be human?" Bianca said finally, turning grim eyes on the young man beside her. "What did you people do to _them_?"

"Ah, now, don't say it like it's my fault, miss," Phineas grumbled, not looking at her. "They were voluntary subjects, as far as I know, or too spliced up to care, at least. That's what I was told, anyways, I don't really know anymore." He shrugged and a light smile returned to his lips. "They're basically a brain and muscles in a metal suit, from what I can see, and they can't take it off. Never have I seen a Big Daddy eat or sleep or do anything apart from murdering anything stupid enough to come after its Little Sister - the little girls. They don't attack unprovoked, but you still have to be careful if you see one."

Bianca sat down with her back against the wall, staring at her hands for a moment, trying desperately to process what she had just been told. This drug was potent enough to make someone insane enough to consent to having a metal diving suit grafted permanently to their body? Even after having seen it, she wasn't sure she believed that it was real.

"One more thing," Phineas said, digging in his bag once more. Bianca's eyes widened and she scooted away, scared that he would pull out a portable tank and order it to blow her up, just for fun. "Calm down," the redhead said, looking at her and raising his eyebrows momentarily. "Ow! Ouch, alright, well, this is it," he said quietly, withdrawing his hand from the bag, holding a syringe filled with luminescent blue liquid and a vial of viscous-looking red liquid.

Bianca raised an eyebrow, not even bothering to ask. Phineas held up a hand and pulled the lid off the vial, which turned out to be a built-in syringe.

"This is for you… You'll need it," he said as she shied away. "It's called a plasmid - it lets you do things that people shouldn't be able to do."

"Like what?" she asked, continuing to edge away as he crawled around the perimeter of the bathysphere after her with the red-filled syringe in hand. "Come on, you're not sticking a foreign object filled with unknown fluid in my body, asshole."

Phineas snorted and almost dropped the syringe, but he regained his composure almost immediately and replied, "Oh, alright. This plasmid is called "Sonic Boom", it's pretty rare so say thank you."

"Yeah, but what does it _do_?" snapped Bianca, placing a foot on her pursuer's chest to keep him at length.

He paused and shrugged, sticking the syringe straight through her pants and into her bum, ignoring her squeak of surprised discomfort. "It should allow you to direct sonic blasts of air at enemies to knock them back and harm them, but I've never used it before. It's rare enough that I was too concerned about getting a dud to use it myself."

Bianca didn't reply, her face contorting as she curled into a ball. She felt strange, but it wasn't pain - not exactly, anyways. It felt like every one of her cells were on fire and would eventually burn to a crisp and disappear altogether, or simply cause her to combust or explode. Then, just like that, the burning disappeared. She uncurled slowly, looking at her hands, then up at Phineas. He smiled encouragingly and held out a hand to help her up. She lifted a hand, brow furrowed, and sent a pulse of air at the smirking Irishman.

"Gah!"

Phineas peeled himself off the wall and glanced around for his hat, which had been blown off in the blast. "Well, it works… And hurts quite a bit, if I may say so…" He donned his hat and pushed the bathysphere open, looking a little disoriented as he did so. He exited, looking at a Splicer with a gaping hole in its stomach with mild interest.

"Sorry," Bianca said lightly and smacked him heartily on the back as she walked past him, earning a groan of discomfort from her companion. "You deserved it, though."

"I know," he gasped, then sat down on the floor, winded. "Woo-ee, lassie, you pack a mean punch."

Bianca flung herself down next to him and scrutinized him. "Are you alright?"

"We'll see, I guess," he said, switching to a squat and looking around. From what he could see, they were near the Kashmir - sort of. They'd have to go through the lounge… or would they? He didn't remember, they needed a map. "I'm going to be perfectly honest with you right now, Bianca. I actually have no idea where we are right now."

"We should make a club," she replied, turning her axe over in her hands and looking absently out the window. A shark swam lazily by, not sparing the building a glance, light reflecting off its small black eyes. "Perhaps we should leave."

"Maybe," Phineas conceded. He stood up and started walking in the direction that the Big Daddy had gone a few minutes before. "The bathysphere will be here later if we decide to leave. Let's at least give the place a once-over."

"Okay, that sounds like an obscenely bad idea," Bianca said, slinging her axe over her shoulder and following him. "Maybe you should try listening to be for once, since, from what I've seen, you've become very fond of not doing that in the short time since we became acquainted."

"Hush, woman," he replied. He progressed slowly, checking around every corner and rummaging through piles of rubbish and cluttered tables as he went, every now and then picking something up and stuffing it into his bag. "There could be Splicers anywhere… Incidentally, they're extremely absent-minded, so I suggest checking everywhere for things they might have dropped or forgotten." As he spoke he picked up what appeared to be a first aid kit and held it up with an I-told-you-so smirk on his lips.

"It looks dirty," Bianca replied dismissively, scratching her cheek.

Phineas stuck his tongue out at her and tossed it into his bag, starting ahead once again. A wild shriek was heard, though, and a woman with black eyes and flaking skin ran at Phineas with a tire iron raised. He raised his gun and shot twice - once for each eye. The woman fell without another sound and Phineas massaged his shoulder which was throbbing from the kick of the gun to his already damaged scapula.

"Sit," Bianca said briskly, though a quirk in her lips revealed concern. Phineas complied, setting himself in one of the spindly chairs surrounding a messy tea table and raising an eyebrow at her. "Give me that," she said, snatching his bag from his hand without waiting for a reply and taking the health kit he had picked up a moment ago. Phineas opened his mouth to protest but she stuffed a wad of cotton swabs from the health kit into it and gestured for him to take his shirt off.

Phineas spit the cotton balls out and commenced to unbuttoning his shirt, grumbling as he did, "It's common courtesy to buy a fella a drink before these shenanigans go on, missie."

She rolled her eyes as he disrobed himself from his shirt, but her annoyance quickly changed to open-mouthed disbelief when she saw his back. The entire surface of his skin was mottled with purple bruising and one of his ribs seemed to be broken judging from the inconsistency of that area with the rest.

"Oh my God, Phin, why didn't you..?"

He offered a pained smile and replied, "You were right, I deserved it."

"You're an idiot," she said quietly, leaning forward and starting to wrap his chest with the bandages in the medicine kit, careful not to touch his swollen back. "I'm not a doctor, but this looks bad, you could have-"

"It's fine," Phineas breathed, cutting her off. He reached over to the table where Bianca had set the box that had contained the bandages and found a small syringe filled with green liquid. He jammed it unceremoniously into his arm and injected the liquid, sighing with immediate relief. Bianca looked at him curiously and he explained, "The bandages will help, I suppose, but down in Rapture the health serum does most of the healing. It's a regenerative compound that fixes whatever happens to be wrong with you at an accelerated rate, with some painkiller for the meantime."

"The bandages won't do anything," Bianca repeated flatly, still pressed lightly against him in order to wrap the bandages around his body.

He chuckled and rubbed his cheek against hers, replying, "Not really."

She wiped a patch of dirt off her cheek where his had touched her and peered over his shoulder. Sure enough, the bruises were receding into his skin, going from purple to splotchy green to yellow to gone in the span of about fifteen seconds.

"You're an ass," she said for what she expected was the fifth time since she had met this strange creature, pulling away and dropping the roll of bandages.

"Aw, come on, doll, I'm charming," Phineas said, quickly tearing the bandage and buttoning his shirt one handed. "Don't be mad, you're the one who threw me at a wall, after all."

"You deserved it," she reaffirmed, not looking at him. Voices could be heard ahead but she didn't slow down, simply shifting her axe to her hands and stalking forward like an angry executioner.

"Wait, you're going to get-"

A blast of fire jetted out of a hallway off of the main room they were walking through and the charred body of a Splicer flew past and hit the wall. A man with wild eyes and torn, bloody clothes followed, shaking a wrench and shouting, "You deserved it, you dumb bitch!" His attentions quickly turned to an angry woman and the nervous man following her, and his half-gone lips turned up in a wily smirk. "Hello, lovely."

The man raised his weapon and his other hand, but before Phineas could shoot him, Bianca swung her axe, the momentum of her rush embedding the blade deep in the man's head. He croaked and fell over, a sick sucking sound filling the room as the axe was pulled out of his brain.

Bianca slung her axe over her shoulder once more and raised an eyebrow at Phineas, who was looking at her with an expression on his face somewhere between disgust and admiration. He shook his head and knelt, patting down the Splicer and pulling a wallet with a few dollars and one of the blue-filled syringes out of his jacket.

"Right, well, I'm going to be findin' you a gun, because that was fucken disgusting," Phineas said, tucking the wallet into his jacket's inside pocket and smirking. The blue hypodermic needle, however, he handed to Bianca. "That's an EVE hypo. If you use your plasmid power too much, which you haven't, you'll start to feel weak. That'll recharge you and allow you to continue to use your Sonic Boom."

"Thanks," she said, tucking the needle into her pocket. "What about you, though, don't you use plasmids?"

"Aye," he said slowly, a frown dawning on his face. "I prefer to stick to me guns, though. If you find any ammunition lying about, I'd greatly appreciate it."

"Fair enough. So… what's the plan?"

Phineas rubbed the bridge of his nose and shrugged. "I actually didn't have much of a plan… I figured one would come to me when we got down here and so far I've got nothin'." Bianca rolled her eyes and he quickly added, "In my defense, I feel like there's not much to plan, iah? Just trot along killin' Splicers and avoidin' Big Daddies and we should be fine, I think."

Bianca sighed once more, raising her eyes to the heavens for patience and mumbling, "You're an ass."

* * *

_I actually have a plot somewhere in there, I swear. I'll try to get to it... uh, let's say next chapter and expect the one after that. Reviews are appreciated, let me know what you think of the characters so far. _


	4. o4 Lambda

_Another update, oh, the joy. In which we actually start to see what the heck Darkie was thinking when she started writing this mess. Hurrah.  
I wrote this instead of doing homework, in case you're curious.

* * *

_

Surprisingly enough, Phineas' "strategy" worked pretty well for the next few hours that they wandered along the wrecked halls of Rapture. The duo soon had a small stockpile of money, EVE hypos, and health kits from the grotesque corpses, some fresher than others, littering the halls of Rapture. They hadn't yet encountered another Big Daddy and Phineas was optimistic that their luck would hold.

"I'm honestly surprised that we haven't encountered any Splicers with guns yet, though," he said, wiping fragments of skull off his cheek as he went through a recently deceased Splicer's pockets and hiding the third revolver that he had found in the past twenty minutes.

Bianca dragged the head of the axe on the ground, not even bothering to wipe the slowly accumulating flecks of blood off of her face. "Can't I just borrow yours?" she asked, peeking behind her at the new trail of blood on the carpet behind her. "Be a gentleman."

"You know, I would, but I really just don't want to," Phineas replied, reloading his gun and starting to walk again. He still had no idea where they were, exactly - every time he thought an area was familiar, he noticed a neon sign flashing a name that he had never seen before. Indeed, as he moved forward he looked up to see an elaborate arrow and the words _Fontaine Futuristics_ above an arching doorway. "This is promising," he said hopefully, casting a sidelong glance at Bianca.

"Have you ever been here before?" she asked, peering cautiously into the new area. It seemed somehow less demolished than the rest of Rapture, at least from what she had seen of it. No Splicers rushed out to greet them, at any rate.

"Well, no," Phineas admitted with a shrug. "But there's nowhere to go but forward."

"That's no reason to be optimistic," Bianca complained, slinging her axe over her shoulder and following her ginger companion inside. "If anything, I'd be more concerned about anyone who can remain sane enough to keep up a security system down here."

Phineas stopped dead, smacking a hand to his forehead. Security system. Of course there was a security system, he had entirely forgotten about the turrets and security bots since they hadn't come across any so far. That would be why there weren't any Splicers around. "Stay back a mo'," he grumbled, picking up a piece of debris and throwing it into the centre of the room. It was promptly torn to pieces by a hail of bullets from two directions, and a light from a security camera hovered on the spot momentarily before shutting off again.

"You're kidding me, how are we supposed to get past all that? They probably have security guards, too," Bianca said, sagging a little. "Let's go back, my feet hurt and I'm tired."

Phineas ignored her, shoving his bag of assorted commodities into her arms and shoved his gun into the front of his pants, sneaking around a forest green couch riddled with bullet holes. He came upon the first turret and pounced, his hands flying as he rearranged wires with practiced ease, shielded from the other turret's sensors as well as the security camera by the turret he was rapidly dismantling. He stepped back as the turret emitted a cheery 'ding' and made a roadie running dash at the other turret, drawing his gun to shoot the camera three times as he went. A few seconds later the other gun made a similar ding and its sensor light went green.

The redhead stepped back to admire his work, adjusting his hat and feeling a hole where the second turret gun's hail of bullets had pierced it. "Not bad, considering," he said, motioning to Bianca, who didn't seem to have fully processed what had just taken place.

"Wait, what, I don't even…"

"I hacked the system to be friendly toward me. I've never really had to hack for two before so you might want to move slowly at first, but if my calculations are right it should work," Phineas said, putting his gun back into his belt and strolling over. He took his bag and put a hand on Bianca's neck, steering her into the center of the room. One of the turrets sputtered a bit but didn't fire, much to Phineas' pleasure. "I am amazing."

"You're a moron, that's what you are," Bianca said, trying to move as little as humanly possible. "All you've done is put me in danger since I've met you."

"Well, now I'm keeping you out of danger," he replied, halting and scooping her up bridal-style in his arms, a look of moderate annoyance crossing his face. "Where to, princess?"

"Well, put me down and we can find a place to stop for a while," she grumbled, squirming uncomfortably in his awkward grip. "I don't like this, what if a Splicer comes?"

"We can stay here," Phineas suggested. He set Bianca down and continued, "The turrets are set to attack anything that's not us, so we should be safe for a while."

"Are you sure?"

"Almost entirely so."

Bianca hesitated for a moment then replied, "Alright, we'll stop here for a while, then. Useful trick you learned with the security thingies, by the way. Can you teach me to do it?"

Phineas looked momentarily taken aback but his surprise didn't last; a self-satisfied smile presented itself and his chest puffed up with pride as he responded, "Nope, that there was pure Carlisle ingenuity right there, can't be taught. I _can_, however, teach you how to hack for yourself. I imagine that you'll be a fair bit slower than I was when I first learned, but you might catch on eventually."

"Your humility is astounding," Bianca grumbled, rolling her eyes and blowing a strand of hair out of her face as she threw herself onto the couch. "Here's to hoping that your contraptions actually work."

With that, she flopped over and closed her eyes, hugging her axe to her chest like a stuffed animal. Phineas watched her momentarily before shrugging and seating himself at her feet, tipping his hat down over his eyes, and falling almost instantly asleep.

* * *

A duet of machine guns startled Bianca out of her slumber some amount of time later - there was no clock in the vicinity - and she found herself pinned beneath Phineas' weight. He seemed to have leaned a bit too much whilst asleep and toppled onto her, then rolled over, resulting in a very awkward situation. Namely, his broad back against Bianca's shoulders, pinning her in place as he snored through the gunfire and rendering her helpless against their unseen assailant.

"Phineas!" she snarled, pushing her axe onto the floor with a clatter and rolling over to try to push the muscular Irishman off of her with her legs. "Wake up, you fat lump of uselessness!"

An offended expression briefly touched his features but he went on sleeping - until Bianca successfully got her feet under his shoulder blades and pushed hard.

"Ow, gahdammet, wotchew want?" he grumbled groggily, sitting up quickly and pressing his knuckle to his eyes. "I dun… what… Oh, shit."

Bianca grabbed her axe and slid out from under Phineas, crawling over the back of the couch and peering over. She couldn't see anything, at first, through the smoke kicked up by the hail of bullets shooting at nothing in particular. As the dust cleared, however, she raised her head and grabbed Phineas by his hair, yanking his head so that his line of sight matched hers. A Big Daddy - taller and slimmer than the one before - was standing directly in the turrets' bullet stream, not seeming to notice them. The helmet of its diving suit was, like the rest of its metal encasing, cracked and dirty, and emitted a dim red light as though it had been used too much.

Phineas sagged and shook his head. "Motherfu-"

The rest of his statement was drowned out by a howl of rage from the metal monster before them, which promptly launched itself at the first turret, the enormous drill on its right arm revving. Even after the poor piece of machinery was in pieces the creature continued to pummel it into a mess of cogs and gears and bullets, all the while taking fire from the other side.

Despite Bianca's best efforts to drag Phineas over the edge of the couch and away from the scene of the carnage, he was frozen in place, staring at the Big Daddy with an expression of unparalleled terror on his face. As it turned to demolish the second turret with another bellow of fury, she stood and hissed, "Phineas, they are _not_ tyrannosaurus, they _can_ see you when you're not moving, so let's _go!_"

"That's not just a Big Daddy, lass," Phineas murmured, though he allowed himself to be pulled over the back of the couch for cover. "That's an Alpha Series Daddy… That's the reason why there are no Splicers here, not the goddamned turrets. I dunno the full story, but I do know that they were the first Daddies ever made." He winced as half of the turret hit the wall in front of them. "They were supposed to be soul bound to a single Little Sister… Well, they found out rather quickly that the monsters weren't cost effective. Once a Splicer got a hold of their little sister, they either died or went mad. All the Alphas left alive now are in a state of permanent rage and I'll be damned if I'm going to stick around to be torn apart by one."

With that, he stood and made a break for the exit, pulling Bianca along behind him, only to run nose-first with a sickening crunch into another Big Daddy of the same build as the one they were running from, its great red light shining down on their faces and reflecting off the blood flowing freely from Phineas' newly broken nose.

The creature just stood there for a moment, head shifting side to side as it presumably looked from Phineas to Bianca and back again. It raised its drill and Phineas whimpered, drawing Bianca into his arms and mumbling, "I'm sorry," over and over, but the Daddy walked straight past them and drew what looked like an enormous gun from a holster on its leg. The other Big Daddy looked up from the turret it had apparently now sufficiently demolished and roared, charging directly from one target to its next.

The new Daddy let out its own howl and raced forward, shooting what seemed to be rivets all the while, all six of which exploded on impact with the opposing creature.

Bianca watched as the titans clashed, simultaneously patting a violently shaking Phineas on the head as an attempt at consolation. It was difficult to say which of the metal Daddies was winning at first, but after about a minute of duking it out, the damage the first one had sustained from the turrets started to show as it slowed and, eventually, fell with an earth-shaking clang of metal on metal.

Their savior turned, a newly torn hole in its armor bleeding slightly as it stomped slowly over to the huddled pair. Bianca tugged lightly on Phineas, trying to get him to edge out the door with her, but he was rooted to the spot and, more importantly, clinging to her like a vice. Neither of them would escape…

The Big Daddy, however, didn't raise its drill or throw them into a wall. It stopped in front of them, the light in its helmet flickering on and off for a good twenty seconds before it finally changed to a bright, electric blue. Bianca looked up at it cautiously, her grey eyes wide and fixed upon the living tank before them. Its diving suit was patched and in general disrepair, though there were no holes apart from the one that the other Alpha had just torn. There was a small hairline crack in the pane of its diving helmet and on a metal plate on its glove was a symbol that Bianca couldn't quite make out.

"I, um," she said, shaking Phineas slightly, never once taking her eyes off the Big Daddy. "Phineas, why is its face blue?"

Phineas turned slowly to look at the thing, his eyes narrowed and a frown on his lips. The Daddy didn't move; it simply stood there as though waiting for an order. "I expect it's because… the yellow light wore out," he said slowly. "It's friendly, why didn't you tell me you picked up another plasmid? Hypnotize would have been really helpful before now."

"I didn't," Bianca replied, frowning. "I don't even know what that is, I'm still using Sonic Boom."

Phineas rolled his eyes and whirled on Bianca, his expression angry, but the Big Daddy revved its drill and placed itself between him and the girl, the light in its helmet completely out now. The redhead stepped back, eyeing the Big Daddy cautiously until its light blinked back on, blue once more.

"I don't know how long Hypnotize lasts on Alpha Daddies, so we'd better find a place to ditch it," he said finally, keeping his narrowed eyes on the creature. He stepped back in surprise when the creature emitted a high, whining sound and shook its head. Phineas turned his eyes to Bianca, jaw slack with disbelief, and asked, "What in the name of all that is holy did you do to this thing?"

"I didn't do anything!" she insisted, shying away as the Big Daddy turned and tried to pick her up. "No, stop that, I don't want to be picked up."

To her surprise, it stopped, but its shoulders humped in what was clearly a pout, emitting the same high-pitched whine as before. Phineas' eyebrows went up and, even in the dim light of Rapture, Bianca could see the cogs in his mind turning.

"Ask it to do something else."

"Um…" Bianca considered briefly and shrugged. "Sit down." The Daddy ignored her, placing its hand on its hip and discovering that its drill was too long to do the same. "Alright, sit down, _please_."

The Alpha complied this time, though it was a laborious task as it attempted to keep its drill from poking anyone in the head or getting stuck in the floor whilst lowering itself. It intermittently emitted what sounded like noises of frustration until it finally managed to make contact with the ground.

"Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit," Phineas murmured to himself, emitting a low whistle. His eyes fell on the Daddy's huge, gloved hand situated on its knee and he squinted at it. "Get it to clean off the glove, that's its model name, if I ain't mistaken."

Bianca thought for a moment and decided, possibly stupidly, to try something. She knelt beside the Daddy and gingerly touched its hand. It didn't seem to notice or care, so she lifted it carefully from its knee and rubbed some of the grime away from the metal on its hand. "It's, uh… I don't know, it looks like Russian or something," she said, jumping slightly when the Daddy's hand closed around hers and it crooned softly.

Phineas chuckled and peered past her at the hand. "It's Greek, lassie. You're currently holdin' hands with Alpha Series model Lambda, how does it feel?"

"Terrifying," she replied, matter of factly. "I'm certain that, at any moment, I shall be stabbed in the head with a drill and nobody will ever be the wiser."

Lambda released her hand and patted her on the head, attempting to stand up. It struggled for almost a minute before giving up and allowing itself to fall back into a sitting position. Phineas raised an eyebrow and grumbled, "Well, now we know how to defeat any more Big Daddies we come across from now on. Knock them down; they're too stupid to figure out how to get back up."

It took a full ten minutes for them to work out a way for Lambda to stand up on its own, but it was, in their defense, a lot easier than either of them would have suspected. Indeed, left to itself while Phineas tried to work out the mechanics of standing with a 100-pound drill attached to one arm and Bianca attempted to stand up while holding a heavy iron rod out straight, it managed to work itself to its feet without undue difficulty.

Phineas noticed this and motioned for Bianca to begin their trek anew. Soon after they set off, however, Phineas noticed something that would likely prove problematic in the future - Lambda followed Bianca like a dog, its heavy footsteps clearly audible from several rooms away, and it sprang to intimidation mode every time something unfamiliar so much as moved. In short, the Alpha Daddy was the opposite of sneaky.

"I think," Phineas sighed as Lambda revved its drill at a mouse which happened to scurry too close to Bianca's feet, "we're going to need a new 'plan'."

* * *

_Before anybody feels the need to comment and shout at me for taking the name of THEIR OC Alpha Daddy - there are only so many letters in the Greek alphabet and Lambda happens to be my favorite. And that's the way the cookie crumbles. Hope you like it so far. |_D


	5. o5 Sister

_Update! As it turns out, Cryoshock123 was exactly right! Congratulations, you win... well, you don't actually win anything except perhaps the eternal admiration of your peers for being a superb guesser, or wonderer, as it were. This one's a little short, but I didn't really have the time to write it, per se... I just made time because I have so many ideas that I need to get out of my brain. xD  
As always, read and review, and enjoy!

* * *

_

As it turned out, Bianca and Phineas' Alpha problem solved itself. For all the excess Splicers Lambda attracted with its aggressive protectiveness and heavy footsteps, it somehow managed to brutally incapacitate every last one of them single-handedly. It would seem that the years it had spent overcome by a blind rage had honed its combat skills better than all the hours Phineas professed to have spent at the firing range, and it certainly didn't hesitate to demonstrate them.

"He's really good," Bianca mumbled to Phineas around the half-filled bottle of Merlot she had picked up off a table a few rooms back, gesturing with the butt of her axe. "Like, quite."

Phineas rolled his eyes and watched Lambda dispatch two Splicers with one well-aimed rivet that penetrated straight through the first and embedded itself in the pelvis of the one behind it. That wasn't so impressive, really. That was the Daddy's job - to kill things. "I think you've had enough," he replied a little nastily, yanking the bottle out of her hands.

Bianca stared at her empty hands for a moment with a confused expression on her quivering lips, which Lambda promptly noticed. It unplugged a wire running from its drill to its bicep and holstered the oversized weapon, stomping over to Phineas with a blank, unlit faceplate. Phineas took a swig of Merlot and gave the Daddy an unimpressed once-over, his nose wrinkling with disdain.

"What, going to beat me up?" he asked as the metal man approached. "I'm doing you a favor, mate, the drunker she gets the more horrible she'll be once she sobers up. Trust me, she'll be better off in the long run." He took another pull off the bottle then tipped it toward Lambda knowingly.

Lambda paused as if considering his words, glancing at Bianca, who was now sitting Indian-style on the floor, picking at the carpet with an expression of utmost fascination. Its light flickered back on to blue and it stooped, scooping up Bianca and slinging her, protesting, over its shoulder.

"Youuuu," she slurred, pointing accusingly at Phineas. "Youuu did this! I h-h-_haaate _ you from now on!" With that, she slumped, only moving to make a little tantrum-y kicking motion every once in a while.

Phineas walked silently beside Lambda, whose light had once again gone out. He could tell that it was uneasy about his being so close to its newly adopted 'Little Sister', but would tolerate him as long as she told it to. Another reason why he had to take the alcohol away - he had gotten off with an 'I hate you' this time, but if this was any indication of what sort of drunk this girl was, it would only take a little misstep on his part to convince her drunken self that ordering Lambda to kill him would be a good solution to the problem.

Having become lost in his thoughts, Phineas tensed up and leapt about two feet into the air when he felt a cold yet gentle touch on his shoulder. He whirled, fumbling for his pistol, only to see that they had come to a fork in the road and Lambda was shifting awkwardly and pointing in the direction opposite the one he was about to go.

"Nah, I want to go this way," Phineas replied, waving the Daddy toward him. The great being took a step back, placing a hand on Bianca's back to keep her in place and shaking its head in protest. "And why in the hell not, boy?"

Lambda simply continued to shake its head, its movement jarring the girl perched on its shoulder and causing her to stir. The Big Daddy ignored Bianca, who was mumbling sleepily and knuckling sleep from her eyes, and pointed at the direction that Phineas seemed set on going, then, in an astoundingly human display that surprised the Irishman, drew its finger across its throat (or the area of its diving suit where it would be, at any rate) in a universal indication of deadly danger.

"Somethin' is gonna kill us if we go that way?" Phineas translated, earning a single nod. He scoffed, drawing his gun and smirking. "Don't worry, big fella, I'll protect ye if need be."

"Where are we?" Bianca grumbled, flailing a little atop Lambda's shoulders. She looked for all the world like a young girl atop her father's shoulders throwing a tantrum at that moment in time, the image not exactly aided by the squinty-eyed pout on her face. "My tummy hurts…"

"Walk it off, milis_*_ - ole Lambda's been totin' you about for long enough, don'tcha think?" Phineas said, starting to walk away. Lambda took a step forward, a hand outstretched as though to stop him, but Bianca squealed with discomfort as she jerked forward so he knelt to allow her to topple off at a safe height. "C'mon, doll, let's be off."

Lambda visibly sagged as Bianca started after her companion without a backward glance after yanking her axe out of one of the holsters on its belt. What it - he - knew that his companions didn't could mean the end of them all, and there was no way for him to communicate his reservations… With nothing left to do, he tromped after them, his posture low, and re-connected his drill as he walked.

Along these halls there were even fewer Splicers than before - that is to say, none. Once or twice, the trio passed a lone Little Sister, seemingly just kicking about with nothing to do. On these occasions, the grey-skinned girls waved at Lambda cheerily but did not approach him as they were supposedly programmed to do. Phineas attributed this to his being an Alpha series and lacking the pheromones of later models (he only guessed this as Lambda smelled much more tolerable than the other Daddies that he had been unfortunate enough to come across), but Lambda knew that their brainwashing had been reversed by something, that they were discouraged from approaching Daddies. Sure, there was the obvious reason that most of the Big Daddies in Fontaine Futuristics were Alpha Daddies, and, as such, completely mad, but there was another reason.

As it would happen, that 'reason' was tailing them very closely from an unseen perch in the rafters, moving soundlessly. Even Lambda was clueless to her presence as she crept after them, leaping from beam to beam, watching as Phineas discreetly eyed Bianca's behind - _I wonder if I could get her into a pair of my pants while I'm still in them_ - and Lambda seemed to sense his ill intentions, decidedly placing himself in the ginger's line of sight and flashing a red screen at him momentarily.

While Phineas' eyes were on Lambda as he retaliated by sticking his tongue out at the beast, a loud thud was heard behind them. Lambda froze on the spot, but Bianca and Phineas whirled, eyes wide. Crouching behind them was a lithe figure dressed in what seemed to be a slimmed down version of the Big Daddy's diving suit armor, complete with glowing red helmet light, though it toted a rapier-like arm-mounted needle in lieu of the Daddy's bulky arm drill.

Phineas frowned a little - he had never seen anything like this before. With a shrug, his winning smirk returning to his lips as he inquired good-naturedly, "How's she cuttin', lassie?"

"Hand over the surface dwellers like a good man, daddy dearest," hissed the figure. Her voice was decidedly feminine, though hoarse and warped as she spoke. "If you cooperate, I'll make sure your deactivation is… _relatively_ painless."

Lambda uttered a low, menacing rumble, stepping in front of both Bianca and Phineas and revving its drill. To his surprise, however, he found himself being pushed (unsuccessfully) aside by Bianca, who looked very grumpy indeed.

"Listen up, creeper, I don't know who you think you are, but this is _my_ Big Daddy now, he likes me _better_ than you, so go find your own, got it? If you want him you'll have to go through _me_ first and today isnot a good fucking day to be messing with me, understand?" As she spoke, Bianca unshouldered her axe, hefting it in both hands and narrowing her eyes. The armored female stayed stock-still, pondering whether this girl was seriously considering taking her on with nothing but a fire hatchet. "I was tricked into coming down into this hell-hole and jabbed in the ass with a superpowered needle by _that_ asshole over there, I've been chased all over the place by violent crack heads, and I haven't had a shower in almost two days! _Try me, bitch._"

The woman remained still for a moment, then, with superhuman agility lunged forward with her rapier poised to strike, only to find herself sprinting straight into a whirring drill head. She barely stopped herself short, trying to backpedal but her momentum was too much and she found herself on her rear with a drill in her face.

"Aw, dammit!" she yowled, flailing her legs a bit with apparent frustration. "No fair, there's three of you."

Bianca picked herself gingerly up off the ground, as Lambda had shouldered her bodily out of the way to get her out of the way, and set a hand on Lambda's shoulder, patting him lightly while simultaneously using him as a crutch. "Drill down, big guy. I don't think we should kill her…"

"Think again," the armored woman snapped. "I'm a Big Sister, and if you let me go, I'll just come back with more!"

Phineas chuckled as Lambda revved his drill and drew it back to strike. "That's not the way you bargain for your life, girl. Now, who or what the devil are you?"

"Hmph, I forgot that you daywalkers are so clueless…" Phineas wrinkled his nose at the word 'daywalker', but only because he suspected it to be a crack at his carrot-orange hair and not at their status as surface dwellers. "I'm what's called a Big Sister… I'm a Little Sister who lived long enough to grow up. As for my name… I'm not going to tell you that."

The Big Sister rolled backward and landed lightly on her feet, taking the time to flip the trio the bird before she bounded away. As if on a second thought, she turned as she was about to exit the room and called, "You should head to the lab, you may find something out about that big friend of yours." She cackled as Lambda sent a hail of rivets her way, dodging them easily and sprinting away.

Bianca looked up at Lambda, her brow furrowed and a hand cradling the side of her head in thought. "What exactly did she mean by that, I wonder..?" Her urge to investigate was strong, but Lambda's urge to protect was stronger - he noticed a small gash in her arm where her axe had cut her when she fell and immediately sat her down to stem the flow of blood. She glanced at the wound with moderate alarm and mumbled, "When'd that get there?"

Phineas, on the other hand, was rummaging through an upended desk, attempting to find… yes. He raised his hand, grinning triumphantly. Clutched in his fingers was a reasonably clean-looking map detailing the layout of Fontaine's building. They were on the first floor, or so he assumed, and according to the map, they would find the 'lab' a few stories up on the fourth floor, and an exit leading through to the rest of the city on the third.

"How badly do you want to find out where Fido here came from?" he asked, approaching Bianca with the map in hand, fanning himself.

Bianca looked up from her arm, which Lambda was clumsily wrapping in gauze. "I think we should go, unless it's out of the way to the point of being - ow - ludicrous." Lambda moaned sadly, drawing his hands away to fidget nervously upon hearing his charge's protest of pain at his touch. "No, no, it's okay, darlin', fix it nice now," she assured the giant and patted him on the hand cheerfully.

Phineas watched with some degree of disgust as the Big Daddy tied the rough bandaging job into a messy bow and patted it then Bianca's head gently. Ever since the Daddy had joined them, she had been acting different… Happier, more alive, as though she had found something very important that she had thought she had lost. "Good gracious, ye silly wan, it's just a machine."

"He takes offense to that," Bianca replied matter-of-factly, wincing as Lambda injected her with a healing serum which would heal both the gash and the cracked ribs she hadn't yet noticed from the force of Lambda's push.

Why he had bothered wrapping her arm, she would never know, but he simply felt more like a caretaker when he knew she could feel the touch of his… well, not skin, but when she could feel his touch tenderly working to mend whatever affliction she was suffering from.

"I'm sure he does," Phineas replied, looking around cautiously. The Sister had warned them that she would be back with more of her kind, so it was imperative that they move on before they were caught off-guard again. "The lab's on the fourth floor, and the exit's on the third. It's not too far out of the way, but it's up to you, I s'ppose."

Bianca considered briefly. If they _did_ go to the laboratory, there was no guarantee that it wasn't a trap or that they would even find anything for their troubles. At the same time, her curiosity had taken hold of her and there was a possibility, however slim, that the files that they may or may not find there would tell them something important about Lambda, the Daddies and Sisters, or Rapture itself.

"Well…"

A loud crash was heard in the next room over and Phineas looked frantically from the doorway to Bianca, hissing, "Well nothing, make up your mind… The Sisters are back!"

_*gaelic for 'my sweet', lolz_

* * *

_That's all for now! I hope you guys liked it. Of course, I wouldn't know, because 5 chapters and over 100 views later I still only have four reviews, so get to reviewing. :C Should they go to the lab and risk an ambush or leave and never know the secrets of Rapture~? Yeah okay I'm from deviantart originally so I judge my worth in pageviews, faves, and comments, sue me. ; A ;_

Alright, that's it for me! Peace out girl scout!


	6. o6 Taken

_Hello, fellows. Has it been long enough since I updated? I don't have a good reason for my absence, unless you count laziness and general writer's block (but only for this story! Yay!). Regardless... Here it is, in case anyone still cares. In this chapter, we actually get somewhere with the plot! Woah!_

_As always, reviews are appreciated.  
_

* * *

Bianca threw a glance over her shoulder, squinting past what remained of her drunken haziness. "We shall have to decide as we run," she conceded as the screech of metal on metal sounded from the other room. She turned on her heel and made a run for it, flying up the stairs three at a time as the screeching got closer. She was almost to the landing by the time Lambda and Phineas had the presence of mind to take off after her.

A pounding headache was starting to take hold of Bianca, though she suspected that the alcohol was only part of the problem. What had that thing meant about the metal monster that seemed to have taken such a liking to her? It – she? – obviously knew something that she didn't. But what were these steel-encased humans, anyways? What God-fearing man had created such Frankensteinian monsters as these and set them loose in the world? She wasn't sure of much, down in 'Rapture' or whatever they liked to call it, but she was certain that nothing here quite qualified as human, from the Splicers to the Daddies to the Sisters, big and small.

The young woman fixed her gaze on a flickering neon sign that seemed to signal a glass hallway from one building to the next. Her grey eyes flicked to one side – though she couldn't quite catch him out of the corner of her eye she could hear Lambda's steel boots thudding heavily as he did all he could to keep up with her and Phineas. She shook a lock of hair out of her face and turned sharply on the landing to continue up the stairs to the next floor. What was the worst that could happen?

Phineas followed her lead warily. The trio of Big Sisters seemed to be meandering slowly toward the stairs, their fire truck red helmet screens glowing up at him. Something in the light seemed to laugh at him as he ascended the stairs at a bounding pace with the Alpha series Daddy trudging up a few steps behind him. They didn't seem concerned with catching them at all…

As he had longer legs than his female companion, he quickly caught up with her, holding an arm out for her to slow down. Bianca looked at him quizzically but did as she was instructed, slowing to a stop and peering over the banister at the Sisters below. They had come to a stop at the foot of the staircase and made no indication that they intended to pursue them any further up. Something about their stance was reminiscent of gossiping schoolgirls, although from four stories up it was impossible to tell if they were communicating or not.

"Why have they stopped?" Bianca asked, gazing suspiciously down at the iron-clad creatures.

"Perhaps they're like Daddies," offered Phineas, leaning against the railing and frowning down on them. "Only aggressive when you're within a certain radius of the little ones." He shook his head and turned away, peering cautiously down the hall. "Now I don't know a damned thing more than you do about those things, but I doubt that that's the case… There must be something up here that even they don't want to tangle with."

His eyebrows furrowed – the more he looked around, the more deserted the area seemed. This, of course, did not bode well. If the Sisters were afraid to come up here, then there was a problem. Likely one that they couldn't take care of themselves for whatever reason. Whether they managed to defeat whatever it was and escape with their lives or perish at its hand, the Sisters came out winners either way. But if there really was something up there, then surely there would be at least some sign of life.

"What do you suppose it could be?" inquired Bianca, looking around as Phineas had done and edging closer to Lambda. The beast's hand was on the trigger of his rivet gun, his helmet port pitch black and somehow more intimidating than the standard angry red. "A Protector-making plant, perhaps?"

Phineas frowned. "Now that you say it… it's possible." He took a ginger step toward a narrow hallway lined on either side with evenly spaced doors. The redhead tread cautiously, gun held at the ready, but all seemed quiet apart from the low clanks of Lambda's diving boots as the Daddy shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. He reached the first door and carefully cleared some dirt away from the small, square window at the top of the door, peering inside. "You might be right. It looks like some sort of medical facility… Hang on, there's some filing cabinets…"

"Oh, splendid," Bianca grumbled, rolling her eyes. "Filing cabinets. We are saved."

Phineas shot her a sour look. "Filing cabinets typically mean files, which mean information. There might be something in there about the Sisters, or the Daddies, or the secret to world peace. Or maybe there's a gahddamn map of Rapture, had you thought of that?" He touched the handle, wiggled it slightly, and found that it turned easily in his hand. "Let's have a look around, at least."

The trio more or less dismantled the room – and several other rooms along the hallway – before finding anything that could possibly be considered 'useful' or even interesting. Most of the file cabinets were filled with patient files for plastic surgeries or plasmid implants, although they did find a few gone off candy bars and some loose cash tucked around in random corners of the file drawers. They seemed to be strictly for patient consultation, as they found no evidence of actual medical supplies or even EVE hypos in any of the rooms.

They were about to give up on the search when Phineas came across a peculiar room toward the end of the hall. This one, unlike the others, was locked, and scalpels and other sharp tools could be seen strewn about on the various counter tops and surfaces, all caked in dried blood. Naturally, this meant that Phineas had to know what was inside.

After several unsuccessful attempts to jimmy the lock, Bianca requested that Lambda "take the door off its bleedin' hinges". The Big Daddy happily complied, taking a running start and flinging his entire weight against the door. The running start was entirely unnecessary – the door flew off its hinges and hit the floor with a bang the instant the behemoth's shoulder made contact. There was no way that anything in the area hadn't heard the commotion.

Nothing came immediately, however, so Phineas ducked past Lambda and surveyed the area. Bianca stayed in the hallway, feeling a little queasy about the bloody state that the room was in. It wasn't the blood that bothered her, obviously, as she had just spent her afternoon playing croquet with an axe as her mallet and the heads of her fellow man as the ball. No, she had never been especially fond of doctor's offices, and the gore smeared on the patient table, counters, medical tools, and generally the entire room did nothing if not reaffirm her mistrust of those in the medical profession.

She listened as Phineas shuffled around, tossing papers on the ground and uttering a little '_ooh_' every once in a while, which she took to mean that he had found something shiny. Lambda did not enter either, opting instead to stand sentinel at the door, his obvious line of sight never once straying away from his adopted charge. Bianca watched him as he watched her, studying the creature before her. Had he truly been human, once? The shape was right, of course, but she had only ever known one man that had been that tall. She flinched away from the memory and focused on the metal guardian before her. Patches of flesh, gray and seemingly decomposing, showed through the ripped diving suit and lent to the idea of inhumanity, immortality, that the colossus' sheer size seemed to convey.

"C'mere! I found something coooool!"

The girl snapped to attention, Phineas' voice startling her out of her reverie. She hesitated, a frown lingering on her lips. 'Cool' in Phineas' terms could be anything from a decomposing body to a patch of rot on the wall shaped like Jesus. Then again… A patch of rot shaped like Jesus _was_ pretty cool…

Bianca stepped past Lambda, patting absently on the arm as she did, and picked her way across the room toward the file cabinet that Phineas was standing at, bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet. She remained silent, afraid to open her mouth lest she retch, and gestured for him to get on with it.

Phineas flashed the handsome, winning grin that she had already grown accustomed to and motioned her over to the file cabinet. "I found the file with all the information on the Big Daddies!" he told her gleefully, pointing at the top drawer. "The section for the Alpha series is right here. We can come up with some clever new nicknames for ole ironclad, derived from his real name, this time."

Bianca frowned and looked at him uncertainly. "I don't know… Don't you think it would be painful for us to bring up memories of his old life, just like that? It feels mean. Besides, if he was some sort of terrible rapist-murderer-psycho-freak, I don't think I want to know about it." She shuddered, looking at the hand with which she had just touched Lambda's arm.

"You're no fun," Phineas told her, waving a hand dismissively and reaching for the file. "Tell you what, I'll have a look first and if he ain't some horrid murder-happy pedophile creep, I'll hand it off to you."

That sounded reasonable enough, but Bianca was a reporter, after all. If someone else was going to know something, she had to know too. She positioned herself beside her ginger compatriot as he pulled the manila folder from the cabinet and threw a glance at her. She nodded resolutely and he flipped the folder open, revealing a photograph paperclipped to what seemed to be a general profile and medical history, as well as a dated journal of the operation converting the man into a Big Daddy. The photo depicted a handsome young man, perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four, with light hair and a mischievous smile, grinning at the camera with his arm around someone off-camera; it seemed that the photo had been cut in half to crop someone else out.

Phineas dropped the file with a smack as Bianca gasped, her breath catching in her chest.

"Vince!"

"Vinny…?"

The Big Daddy turned slowly as if in recognition to the pair, each in varying degrees of shock. Bianca, at discovering where it was that her fiancé had disappeared to all those years ago, and Phineas, at realizing that he had spent the past two days in the company of that girl he had thought his best friend had run off with - the girl that he had warned the stupid bastard would be the death of him, and at realizing that he hadn't.

* * *

_I BET YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING, SHABANG. _

_Actually, you probably did. Whoops. Someone remarked that I should explain Lambda's affinity for Bianca lest she be cast into the realm of Mary Sue. Well, this was the plan, hope it's satisfactory and less Sue-ish than you were expecting.  
_

_Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. As ever, reviews are appreciated.  
_


	7. o7 Rescue

_Ermagerhd, it's been forever. I've been really distracted with class and such recently so I haven't actually had much time to think about writing at all..._

_Oh well. Here it is! Boss battle! I hope it was worth the wait.  
_

* * *

Silence hung heavy over the trio as Bianca and Phineas attempted vainly to comprehend the information that they had just been served. It was impossible to tell which was reeling more from the revelation that the creature that they had been traveling with for the past day could possibly be someone from their past, but each was clearly working through what was happening at their own pace. Even Vincent himself, Big Daddy though he was, seemed subdued by the melancholy in the air.

Phineas was, unsurprisingly, the first to speak.

"So he didn't run off with some dame, then," he said quietly. The remark was probably meant to be humorous, but it came off dry and heavy and he felt instantly guilty when he turned to Bianca and saw the tears welling in her eyes. "I…"

The girl looked away, blinking tears from her eyes and biting her lip. "Not now, Finn," she whispered. Her voice was choked, as though she could barely get it out around the emotions knotting in her throat. "I can't. Not now."

He opened his mouth and, for the first time in his life, couldn't think of a thing to say. He just gazed at her for a moment, his mouth slightly agape as he searched for words of consolation, but all he could think to do was extend his hand with the photo of his old friend still dangling from his fingertips.

Bianca's lower lip quivered as she stared almost defiantly at the proffered scrap of glossy paper, her grey eyes flickering up to meet Phineas' tragically hopeful gaze. Hoping that she could keep it together, hoping that he wouldn't have to comfort her while she broke down when he could barely hold it in himself, hoping she wouldn't think about the horrific things that they had surely done to the man she had loved to make him this way. Then she lost it. She burst into tears, snatching the photo from him and sprinting past him, past Vincent, and out the door. He swore under his breath and started after her, but the Big Daddy blocked the doorway, the portal of his helmet a pit of darkness.

"Don't be daft, mate, she can have her hissy fit elsewhere," Phineas snapped, attempting to shoulder past the behemoth blocking his path. "Preferably supervised and in an area that I'm familiar with."

While the ironclad beast made no indication that he was going to step aside, neither did he show any menace toward the flustered redhead before him. It seemed like too much to hope that maybe he retained some memory of his old friend, although he _had_ seemed to remember his former lover on some level… Phineas stared up at the darkened window in his friend's helmet, shoulders down and eyes wide with internalized melancholy. He was tall, taller even than he had been back then, and while Phineas himself was not a short man it made him feel very small by comparison. Moreover, it made him feel secure, like he had someone to take up his slack if he were to do something wrong, just like before.

"She might get hurt, Vinny," he said quietly, looking away. "It'd be my fault and I couldn't deal with that."

A huge, gloved hand in his face startled him out of his dramatic reverie and he looked up curiously at the Big Daddy before him. If he had a face anymore, Phineas was sure that his expression would be one of expectant impatience, though he couldn't work out exactly why... but… He eyed the creature warily and smacked his hand down in the palm of its outstretched hand, and was startled to find that it yanked its hand back with slightly curled fingers and made a motion that could only have been a finger snap over its shoulder. Their 'secret handshake' – it had gotten them laughed at on numerous occasions when they were working down on the black market docks to make ends meet.

"You _do _remember me, you piece of shit," exclaimed Phineas. The Big Daddy let out a low rumble that sounded suspiciously like laughter. "So all those times you were threatening to kill me, you were perfectly conscious of what you were doing?" The blue light flickered on. "I hate you."

Phineas pulled his revolver out of his belt and ducked past the now-complaisant Lambda, who turned and lumbered after him as he stormed away in a huff. He paused at the end of the narrow hallway to inspect the area and determine his missing companion's route of escape. A glance over the banister ruled out the notion that she might have gone back the way they had come – the posse of Big Sisters remained at the bottom of the staircase, turning their helmeted heads skyward to look at him when they heard him coming, though they made no move to come after him. That left two options, that he could see. She had either continued on the fourth floor down the wider hallway intersecting the narrow one they had just come from, or she had made her way downstairs to the third floor where they had determined that the exit was located.

"Think she ditched us?" he mused aloud, glancing over his shoulder at Vincent, who shook his helmeted head slowly. "Down this hallway, then."

The hallway they continued along had no doorways, though he noted that uncomfortable plastic-y chairs lined it. A waiting area, perhaps? He didn't linger on the thought, just continued walking with only the sound of his own breathing and the clank of Vincent's steel boots on the floor in his ears. Should he call for her? If she was hiding from them, alerting her to their presence could prove counterproductive, and beside that he still had no idea what was up here…

Then a stench so powerful he was almost bowled over hit his nose and he choked on the breath he had just taken in. He stumbled over to the wall to brace himself and retched dryly, his eyes tearing up as the smell enveloped him. Vincent, of course, could smell nothing and stood awkwardly by until Phineas could straighten himself up with the collar of his jacked pressed firmly over his mouth and nose.

"Perhaps… she went the other way…" he offered in a muffled voice. There was no way that anyone would keep going this way… unless they weren't given a choice. He mulled it over for a few seconds, glancing up and down the hall indecisively. He certainly didn't _want_ to continue on the path to what seemed to be the septic tank of all of Rapture, but he couldn't get the thought of her being dragged, dry-heaving too heavily to even scream, into the stink out of his head now that it was there. "Argh, alright, just a quick peek… Better safe than sorry…"

It only took another moment of walking for them to determine the cause of the horrendous stink. Phineas had another episode of trying to vomit with nothing in his stomach as they walked past the first instance of what seemed to be a person smeared across the wall, apparently thrown so forcefully that they had more or less exploded on impact. It was obvious from the smell and general appearance of the gore that it had been there a while and was in some state of decomposition. Phineas cringed as he thought that not even a Big Daddy could throw that hard and walked a little faster, his heart banging against his ribcage as he thought that Bianca might be back here somewhere with whatever had made that mess…

There were more smears of human remains as they continued down the hallway, all of them varying in freshness compared to the one they had first come across. Many of them were completely dried out and were little more than brownish stains on the wall, while others were still in the process of sliding slowly, wetly down the wall leaving a trail behind them. When he dared to look, Phineas thought – _oh God I'm a sick man_ – that they seemed deliberately, almost artfully, arranged. He noted, with mixture of fear and satisfaction, that a few of the piles of viscera obviously contained the remains of the diving suit of a Big Sister.

He was growing faint when he noticed that the hallway had opened up to a large operating theatre. Unlike the hallway leading up to it, and, in fact, the rest of Rapture, it was spartanly clean. The marble floor gleamed, the operating table wasn't even a little bit bloodstained, and the walls were lined with fancily framed portraits hung so close together that it was almost impossible to tell what color the walls were (also white).

Phineas glanced over his shoulder at Vincent, who shifted uneasily from foot to foot and fumbled with the cord of his drill as he tried to connect it one-handed. No question about it – this place was even weirder than the hallway that had led up to it by a long shot, if it had a Big Daddy nervous.

The redhead scanned the room again and noticed a door at the other end of the room, slightly ajar with light pouring out into the dimly lit operating chamber. _Probably an office_, Phineas thought absently, his eyes flicking down to the gun in his hand as he rolled the cylinder out to assure himself that it was loaded. As the wheel clicked back into place, he heard something from the back room that made his blood turn to ice in his veins.

"_NOOO_, don't you dare touch me, creep!"

"Bianca," he whispered, gritting his teeth. He shot a glance at the Big Daddy behind him and held up a hand for him to remain where he was. Upon receiving a nod of understanding, he dropped low and crept silently to the back of the room, pausing at the door and listening intently for signs of life.

Through the crack in the door, he couldn't actually see his brunette damsel, but he did see the one holding her captive. A young, handsome man with raven black hair and ivory skin smiled coldly from behind a canvas, his willowy figure clad entirely in black. There was something in his hand… a pencil? He clearly wasn't a Splicer, but there was something off about him nonetheless.

"Now, dear, don't make such faces," he purred, reaching past the canvas, behind the door so Phineas couldn't see. An annoyed squeak told him where his companion was in the room as the man presumably touched her again – from the way the rest of his body moved, Phineas surmised that he was brushing Bianca's hair away from her face. "You have such a nice face, you don't want to be immortalized as some sobbing gargoyle of a girl, do you?"

"You're a monster," he heard her snarl at him. "Painting people's pictures with their own… insides! You're disgusting!"

The painter sighed tragically, raising a hand dramatically to his forehead. "Alas, you're just another critic who doesn't understand my genius. You simply don't _get_ the point that I'm trying to make. Beauty means nothing if you've no brains to back it with, love."

Outside, Phineas had turned to stare in abject horror at one of the paintings on the wall. From far away, it had looked innocent enough, but up close, it was just as Bianca said; the framed canvas depicted the distraught face of some poor creature painted entirely in various shades of brown, chunky in places and smooth in others. A little further away he saw a more recent work, still red in places where the blood hadn't yet dried and oxidized. He felt sick but pushed the sensation down, gripping his gun tight until his knuckles turned white. One shot, that was all it would take…

He swallowed hard and looked up with resolve, only to see the painter's silvery-blue eyes fixed upon him through the crack in the door, his brow quirked a little in confusion. Phineas felt his jaw tighten and he backpedaled, eyes wide, as the painter approached the door slowly, pencil in hand.

Phineas was about to discharge his gun when the painter opened the door, his expression baffled, and asked in a reasonable tone, "Is there something I can do for you?" Before he could answer, he saw the man raise a hand languidly and felt the gun being yanked out of his hands by an invisible force, then watched as it flew at the wall at an astonishing speed and shattered completely.

The ginger stared past him at Bianca, who was tied to a chair and looking extremely flustered, but otherwise completely unharmed. She had a fresh coat of lipstick and mascara on and was actually looking quite nice given the circumstances.

"I was… admiring these lovely portraits," Phineas replied, straightening up and offering what he hoped was his signature charming smile. The painter lowered his plasmid hand, his eyebrows arcing in disbelief. _Got him._ "I was just sayin' to my, er, esteemed colleague, it's a cryin' shame they ain't out for the rest of the city to enjoy, you see."

The dark haired man's ice blue eyes followed his gesture to the Big Daddy still waiting near the entrance, looking as nervous as was possible for such a thing. Phineas' eyes flicked between the painter and the bound girl behind him, waiting helplessly to see if this clearly disturbed creature would buy his lie. He thought he saw the man's eyes narrow with suspicion and flinched, preparing to be liquefied against the wall, but instead his eyes closed and he smiled. Not the cold smirk from before, but an expression of genuine pleasure.

"I'm so glad _someone_ appreciates them. I agree completely, I wish that I could display them for all of Rapture to see," he said, his tone nothing short of cheerful. "I can't in good conscience move these works of art out into the city as it is, horrendous pit of filth that it is. I'm sure you understand."

"You're absolutely right," Phineas agreed eagerly, his eyes darting frantically to Bianca. He gestured to her to run while the strange painter was distracted, but she gestured with her chin at the ropes binding her wrists to the arms of the chair. "However did you manage to get your materials to such a perfect consistency?" he inquired delicately. He knew that the plasmid that he had just seen was some form of Telekinesis, but he was positive that its effects were not that powerful.

"Oh, that's the boring part, bunch of silly science-y things of no consequence. I just modified a Telekinesis plasmid in the lab to be a trifle more powerful than usual. The real magic happens after I've acquired the materials." The young man practically squealed with delight, clapping his hands like an excited school girl. "I was just about to begin another project, would you like to observe?"

Behind him, Bianca's eyes widened and she shook her head frantically at Phineas who did his best to look nonchalant as he replied, "I would love to, but I regret to inform you that you've mistakenly picked up someone who's very important to the art community. You see, she's actually a direct descendant of… Picasso." He paused, watching the painter's nonplussed expression with a poker face of his own. "So you can't make her into a painting," he added pointedly.

The painter deflated. "Oh dear. She was coming along so nicely."

"There will be others," Phineas offered sympathetically, moving slowly forward and patting him gingerly on the shoulder as he moved past. He knelt beside Bianca and set about untying the ropes binding her wrists. This had worked out infinitely better than he had dared hope.

"Another time, then?" inquired a tiny voice behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the painter watching him with a finger pressed to his lips uncertainly, his eyes disconcertingly wide as he stared at the redhead.

Phineas hesitated, his hands slipping on the ropes as he tried to untie them without looking. Bianca made an urgent noise and he mumbled, "Of course," before turning back to what he was doing. He felt like he was tricking a child. A terrifying, severely deranged child, but a child no less. He finished freeing Bianca's right hand and shifted so he could get to the left one, his new position giving him a good view of the strange young man flitting about with a feather wand, happily dusting the frames of his gruesome portraits. Phineas grimaced and decided that he wouldn't be able to put the poor guy out of his misery on the way out; he would feel bad about it.

He let out a small grunt of satisfaction as the second rope fell away, thus saving the princess. His princess then proceeded to surge to her feet, grab her fire hatchet which was leaning against the wall a few feet away, and stalk meaningfully toward the prancing artist.

"Bianca, don't," Phineas hissed, grabbing her shoulder and yanking her to a stop. "He will _smush you_ if you even try it, ye silly wan, just let it go and be glad I was here to save you."

She bristled at him but let the axe slide down to dangle loosely on the tips of her fingers. "My hero," she growled over her shoulder. She looked away a little guiltily and said in a much quieter voice, "Thanks for coming after me."

"You're stuck with me," he replied with a wry smile, giving her a light push to get her moving again. "Be seeing you, ah… Sorry, didn't catch your name, sir?"

"Wolfgang," the artist replied, looking up in surprise. "Wolfgang Grimsley Gregoire the Third." He bounced over to Phineas with a cheery smile on his lips and said matter-of-factly, "Besides, there's no need for goodbyes. I'm going with you, you know."

Phineas felt Bianca stiffen under his fingers as Wolfgang grabbed hold of the redhead's other arm, linking their arms and smiling up at him like a child. A few yards away, he heard the now-familiar wheeze of a Big Daddy's laughter as Vincent apparently caught sight of what was happening. His shoulders drooped and he closed his eyes, seeking divine patience, then turned with a falsely cheery grin to introduce himself.

* * *

_ANOTHER TWEEST. _

_I was originally going to have the gang actually fight Wolfgang, but I really like writing this character so I'll keep him around for a while. I hope you guys can grow to like him and his crazy as much as I do.  
_

_I admit I got the idea that Phineas would talk him down from a game of Dungeons & Dragons I played a little while ago... I'm playing a cleric of a really horrifying god of Law and Fire and Strength and such who's really really scary looking but has a super high charisma, and my friend is playing a dragon shaman, and together we intimidated the boss battle of the session out of actually fighting us. XD  
_

_Oh well. See you next time!  
_


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